UK’s Arts Spending Is Lower Than That of Most European Countries

According to a new report, the UK has some of the lowest levels of government spending on the arts in all of Europe.

Titled The State of the Arts, the report by the University of Warwick and the Campaign for the Arts gathers data on funding, education and employment in the arts in the country.

Between 2009 and 2023, there were significant cuts to UK state funding for the arts, with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)—the government agency responsible for backing cultural organizations in the UK—reducing its core funding by 18 percent.

England invested 6 percent less in cultural spending per person between 2010 and 2022, falling behind peers like Germany, France, and Finland. Those countries increased their arts spending in that 12-year period by 22 percent, 25 percent, and 70 percent, respectively.

According to the report, UK’s spending of $260 on culture per person was 44 percent lower than the European average spend.

The research shows a stark decline in enrollment in arts education, blaming reduced funding and a broader “marginalizing” of the category in state-funded schools. The report called the issue a “crisis,” noting that standardized test scores in the UK’s school system, GCSE and A-level entries in arts subjects, dropped by 47 percent and 29 percent since 2010.

The report also notes there have been significant reductions in funding by the Arts Council, the primary supporting body of arts organizations in the UK: 18 percent in England, 22 percent in Scotland, 25 percent in Wales, and 66 percent in Northern Ireland.

Though the research focuses on the implications of the more than decade-long decline in public funding in the arts, it omits comparisons to varying levels of private funding that may be making up for some of the gap.

According to a report from the Arts Council England on private investments in the arts published in 2022, money from networks of private funders accounted for £799 million ($1.03 billion) of the sector, 44 percent of which comes from individual donations.